2006 Nuits Saint-Georges Les Cailles 1er Cru

"A surprise vintage," says Bertrand Chevillon about 2007. "The wines have good acidity and they've been getting better and better in barrel. They're similar to 2000 but deeper and more serious, with blacker fruits. And they may have a bit more density." The fermentations in 2007 lasted up to five weeks as the wines took a long time to digest their sugars, Chevillon noted. He was also happy to have a full crop in 2007.

Bertrand Chevillon compared the estate's young 2006s to its 2002s and 2001s, which suggests that the new crop of wines will be classic and slow to evolve in bottle. The fermentations were longer than usual (up to four weeks), and the racking regime was a bit complicated by irregular malolactic fermentations, which ended between February and June. Chevillon told me that the estate does not do a green harvest in its oldest parcels, but does pull leaves on the north side of the vines, usually at the end of June. Grape sugars in 2006 were generally around 12.2%, and some chaptalization was done. Incidentally, the Chevillons just bought some more vines in Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Cailles and now own all of the Cailles land that they work. Previously they had a fermage arrangement on this parcel. Bertrand also noted that the family doesn't own vines in Les Saint-Georges, and owns only a part of the Vaucrains from which it makes a consistently superb wine. The rest of their fruit in these two splendid premier crus comes through fermage agreements.